


a rudimentary lye

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Death, Blood and Violence, Cage Fights, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Light Masochism, Rough Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28543467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: She rose to the bait. “So what will you do with me, General?”Petrine laughed. It was not a pretty sound, raucous and cruel like the calls of carrion-birds, circling Titania’s bed.“What do you think! You’ll look ever so pretty in my colors, don’t you think? See you on the sands, Mercenary!”
Relationships: Prague | Petrine/Tiamat | Titania
Comments: 9
Kudos: 7





	a rudimentary lye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [walonvaus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/walonvaus/gifts).



> happy nagamas, krad!! sorry this took so long. it got really....out of hand. but somehow, i dont think youll mind :V i hope you had soome good holidays and a good start to the year!
> 
> title from "soap" by the oh hellos
> 
> note: animal death tag refers to killing wolves (+etc) in the arena.

The door to her cell creaked on its hinges, sliding open. Footsteps approached, echoing against the stone walls, ring of keys clanking as they were spun, tossed, spun. Beside her bed, the steel heel-and-toe of the boots came to a halt, _tack_ ing on the wooden floor. A presence stood over her, one that Titania could place a face to even without looking. She could smell blood and oil, and the faintest scent of lily and marigold perfume brushing the edges. 

“Afraid to face me?” Petrine asked. Her voice was mocking. Titania didn’t bother opening her eyes, let alone rising to the bait. “I know you aren’t asleep.” Petrine kicked the leg of Titania’s cot, rattling it against the wall. If she had been asleep, she’d be awake now. “I came all the way down here to gloat at you, so stop ruining my fun.”

Titania kept her silence until, with a rustle of cloth and a shift of armor, a knee landed on the bed next to her and the full weight of General Petrine leaned over her. “Good morning,” Petrine snarled, a puff of hot air onto Titania’s face. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

Titania opened her eyes. Petrine’s face was scant inches from hers, her mouth snarled into a grimace of annoyance. She had painted her lips a dark blue today, just off enough from her hair color to work as an accent. Her eyes were narrowed, angry.

“Good morning,” Titania replied, with a calmness she didn’t really feel. Fury and grief still waged within her, one in equal measure to the other, grappling together and consuming her mind. It hadn’t even been three full days since Greil had died and Titania had rushed out after the Black Knight, out of her better mind with her rage. That she had even survived the experience was, she was sure, nothing less than sheer luck.

Well, perhaps not that. An honorable death defending Greil’s memory in battle would have likely been a better, cleaner end than whatever Petrine probably had in mind now.

Petrine leaned back, grimacing, and took her foot down off of Titania’s bed. “ You’re a lucky woman, I’ll have you know. The Black Knight spoke up for you to the King, told him you knew nothing. Either way, His Majesty has left you to me, to do whatever I want with you.” Titania closed her eyes again. Torture, certainly. “I thought he would torture you until you broke, and that would be...” Petrine clicked her tongue. “Such a...waste. Beautiful warrior don’t just spring out of the ground. Wasting Gawain’s final student for questioning would hardly do.” Titania exhaled to keep from visibly gritting her teeth. She needed to stay calm. She needed not to rise to the bait.

She rose to the bait. “So what will you do with me, General?”

Petrine laughed. It was not a pretty sound, raucous and cruel like the calls of carrion-birds, circling Titania’s bed. Jeering at her as she lay down and waited to be pecked apart. If her death could somehow buy Ike time, then let it. She would not give them anything, nothing of herself, nothing of Greil, nothing of her family. 

“What do you think!” Petrine at last crowed. “The Arena, my dear! I’m just _dying_ to see how long you’ll last. My money’s on a week, but you’ve surprised me before.” Titania opened her eyes, looked at the General, who winked and blew her a kiss. “You’ll look ever so pretty in my colors, don’t you think? See you on the sands, Mercenary!”

The door swung shut after Petrine left, whistling with every step, and Titania sat for a long time, staring up at the ceiling. 

Pit fighting.

How...delightful.

They dragged her out two days later, two jailers frog-marching her through the halls until they reached an oubliette in the farthest part of the jails. The door was opened and then, without saying anything, the guards shoved Titania forward. She tripped, surprised, and toppled down through the trap-door, falling and instinctively rolling as she dropped about twenty feet onto the sands below. She stumbled, her right knee buckling under her weight, and fell to her knees, her armor rattling as it bit into her skin.

The trap door above closed. There was the slightest bit of light that still entered, from slitted windows high at the tops of the walls, barred all the way around the circular room she had fallen into. The air was full of dust and the scent of gore, and she could hear distant murmuring, the sounds of voices. Coming through the windows, no doubt—her audience.

She had no horse, no axe,  no lance, no shield. Nothing but her armor and her own wits. Warily, Titania crouched, keeping her weight off of her knee, which ached, throbbing with her heartbeat. She shifted to keep her back towards the nearest wall, relying on the sheer, featureless stone to guard it. For the moment, she was alone, although that surely would not last.

Indeed: even as she thought it, across the room from her, there was a small grate that raised. Her opponent crawled through a moment later, and although she had expected perhaps another prisoner, stripped of arms and armor and fighting for their life, instead, what she found herself facing was—

For a moment, Titania thought that she was facing a Laguz, gone feral, transformed by pain and suffering into a creature of baser instinct. It was not. It was, however, a full-grown wolf, starved to nothing but lean muscle and bone, eyes bright and hungry. It opened its jaws and snarled, spittle flecking the floor in front of it, hackles raising as it sighted Titania.

Sheer terror froze her to the spot. Titania could feel the throbbing pain in her knee and hear nothing but her own, terrified breathing. Her whole body shook, adrenaline making her long for movement even as fear prevented her from shifting. There was a part of her brain, the brain of a terrified child, that knew that prey ran. If you stayed perfectly still, stared down the enemy, you weren’t prey.

But there was nowhere to run, and nothing else to distract the wolf. Nothing but her and it. Nothing but her bare hands against nature, red in tooth and claw. And that nature was  _hungry_ .  Titania was the prey it had on hand, and it  _would_ eat her.

She heard, distantly, far away from herself, Petrine’s jeering, raucous laughter, ugly and sharp and cruel. It brought her back, snapped the world back into clear-eyed focus, because Titania remembered her words—Petrine expected her to last a week. Petrine didn’t expect Titania to live. This was all just a farce, bloodsport for the sake of bloodsport.

Titania grit her jaw. “Fuck you,” she said it under her breath, just so she could hear it, could draw strength from it. She had armor, and that would have to be enough. She would only have one chance to take the wolf by surprise, to let it come get her, assuming she was too scared to fight back. 

Keeping her left arm in front of herself, as if she was holding a shield, Titania slowly shied back along the curved wall of the oubliette chamber, trying to even her breathing out, to keep her head and vision clear.  The wolf came forward, sniffing, and Titania could now see that it was limping heavily on its front left leg, the limb dragging behind it. That was her opening. As soon as it pounced—

When it jumped for her, Titania surged forward into the wolf, smashing her gauntlet into its mouth, driving it forward with all her strength. The animal screamed, in anger or pain or both, as one loose tooth was smashed loose. Titania had the advantage of weight on her side solely because she had both half-plate and was not starving, and used it, taking the wolf’s momentum and surprise to flip it onto its back.

Her right leg might not have been ready to take her weight, but that was fine. All that Titania needed was something to lean on, and as she struggled, the wolf biting at her arm, teeth catching on her gauntlet and mercifully not into her flesh, she got her knee onto the creature’s throat.

“I’m sorry,” Titania whispered, pressing her throbbing knee with her full weight into the animal’s windpipe. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It kept coming out of her without her even meaning to speak, a mantra she murmured over and over again as she pinned the wolf’s head upside-down against the ground, tears burning her eyes. She leaned onto its throat until she felt something give, cartilage crushed beneath her overpowering weight. The wolf tried, again, to bite her, tried to claw her, but its uninjured leg was pinned by her legs, and its injured leg did not have the range of motion nor the strength required to do more than to swipe, scoring lines down her breastplate.

“I’m sorry,” Titania sobbed, as the wolf, unable to properly fight back, eyes rolling to their whites with terror, died. Died beneath her on the bloodsands. She hung her head, choking herself on unshed tears, waiting until it went fully limp before she pulled her arm free of its mouth. 

Wolves were predators. In her years as a mercenary, Titania had seen what starving wolves could do to livestock, to property, to unarmed farmers and villagers when they were starving, during the winter months. She had killed her fair share, but always from horseback, with blade in hand.

Greil had told her when she had first joined the mercenaries that you could kill a hundred men with a blade, but the first one you killed with your hands would be the one you never forgot. Death was different when you did it with nothing but the few tools the Beorc had been gifted, nothing but your own flesh and blood.

Titania brushed the matted fur from the wolf’s snout, set its head gently to rest on the floor. It had deserved better than this.

The trap-door above opened, and a ladder was lowered down into the oubliette. Titania stood and left, limping on her injured knee, and tried to think about nothing at all.

The rest of that first week her opponents were other prisoners, just as unarmed as she was. It was no better, killing unarmed men and women who were themselves not fighters, but at least they  _understood_ that it was kill or be killed. They knew what was happening, understood as logically as she did, that she had no choice. That  _they_ had no choice. 

That made it no easier for Titania to bear, to lay in her cot, aching and bruised, and try to calm her racing heart and forget the faces of men and women she had to kill with her bare hands.

When she survived the first week, once more Titania was visited by Petrine,  who arrived this time in full armor, still covered in the sweat and blood of battle. Titania did not stand from where she was sitting on the edge of her bed, watching warily as Petrine opened the cell door. “You won my bet,” Petrine said, as soon as the door was open. She crossed her arms. “Not that I was able to see it, but  I got paid either way. His Majesty wants to see you in action himself, so you’re being put into the arena in Nevassa. Come along.”

She turned around and started to walk away, and it was only when Petrine had taken three steps that Titania summoned her voice. “No.”

The General stopped, turned back to face her, cocked one brow. “‘No?’”

“No,” Titania agreed. “What are you trying to prove, General. That when you throw me in with the beasts I’ll fight as one of them? To break me? I’ll not fight blood-sports for your king because he wants to see me, cradling the dead bodies of the innocent.”

Petrine didn’t move, seemingly unperturbed by Titania’s words. At last she shrugged one shoulder. “ Ashnard rewards those who survive. Fight well enough and maybe he’ll see you given back your horse and your axe. The smart deserters are the ones who use the chaos of the battlefield to their advantage. Make the best of what you have, or don’t. It’s no skin off of my back.” Petrine turned and kept walking, and when she was out of sight, vanished down the hall, she called back, “When I was in your shoes, I kept fighting.”

_When,_ not  _if._

Titania stood, aches and pains and all, and followed Petrine down the hall and out of the prison, into the bright light of day.

After Petrine delivered Titania to Nevassa, she disappeared, for days or weeks at a time, taken up by the war effort. She expected that to be the last that she saw of any of the Four Riders, but to her surprise, the Black Knight was a frequent guest at her arena matches, watching silently from the back of the stands, his armor catching the light. The King, too, came to watch, jeering or laughing at her bloodier bouts, and soon enough she had been  _rewarded_ , if you could call it that, with the opportunity to use weapons.

Some days, Titania would form a team with her fellow prisoners, and then the next be forced to kill them. She fought animals, feral Laguz, a war-horse in full armor, and everything between. Her once well-maintained armor was soon scored, nicked, and battered all over, her clothes closer to brown or grey than white, even if she was able to wash them at the communal prison fountain. There was a priest who kept her injuries from becoming infected, and with his magic her knee almost healed back to full strength, even if it refused to take her full weight alone. 

When Petrine was in Nevassa, she would sit in the front row of the arena and watch Titania silently. Gone was her raucous jeering, her insults hidden in a half-laugh, hurled from behind the bars of the oubliette windows. Now she kept her eyes narrowed, followed Titania’s every move. If the General was making money from Titania’s success in battle, she certainly said nothing, and never visited Titania’s cell to speak to her as she had before they had come to the capital. 

Petrine just came and watched, as if she was trying to find some answer in the swing of Titania’s blade. And perhaps she was, for someone was making conspicuous gifts, better armor or weapons. Titania’s horse even was stabled, apparently recovered and kept by  _someone_ after she had been captured, and now she was able to ride it into combat, where she could trample feral Laguz attempting to kill her to the screams, jeers, and taunts of the crowd. 

Two months after her arrival in Nevassa, two months of blood and gore on the sands, the tick-tack of steel-toed boots sounded outside the cubby that Titania had been given to sleep in, no longer locked in behind bars. 

Petrine stood there, leaned one hand on the lintel of the door. She was out of armor, her boots still caked in mud and dust. She had been riding. Titania hadn’t seen her in three days, which meant she had just arrived back.

“The Bloody Paladin,” Petrine mused, as if tasting Titania’s ill-won moniker on her tongue. “In the flesh. You’re smaller than they claim. Armor less white, more...grey.”

“Are you just here to gloat, or were you visiting for some more useful reason?” Titania, down on her knees with a washtub and a board, was scrubbing her clothes. Her coat had been badly torn and she’d had to mend it again, and blood never came out easily. In only her breastband and breeches, her hair bundled up on top of her head, she was hardly at her best. 

“My men took on the Greil Mercenaries today,” Petrine replied.

Titania froze, her hands up to the elbows in suds. She took a few, sharp, fearful breaths.

“Gawain’s children? I saw them both. Ike is a capable commander, even at his age. In ten years, he’ll be as invincible as his father supposedly was.” The moment between breaths where Titania’s heart had gone totally still eased, she breathed out, tension leaving her frame. She sagged, suddenly exhausted.

Titania leaned her head against her washboard, watching Petrine warily as the other woman tugged off her gloves, tucked them through her belt, came over, and took the board and Titania’s coat from her hands. She knelt down next to the washtub, somehow graceful, and took over grinding out the blood from the cloth. Titania was too tired to stop her. 

“Why are you telling me this,” she said at last, watching Petrine finish her laundry. “Why are you doing my laundry.”

“You cared for the boy like he was your own child, didn’t you?” Petrine shrugged. “That’s why you keep fighting, isn’t it? To return to his side. You aren’t going to survive out there without something to fight for. All my money is riding on you, so I’d prefer you stay alive.”

“That doesn’t answer my second question.”

Petrine grimaced, and said nothing at all. She finished cleaning Titania’s coat and tossed it back into the soapy water, dropped the washboard so that it clattered into the tub below.

“Nobody ever helped with mine.” Petrine stood, shaking water off of her hands. “His Majesty is thinking of assigning you to my unit. What’s a few more cold-blooded murders between you and freedom, hmm?”

Titania found herself leaning back against her cot, exhausted, and watched Petrine leave. Her coat lay, clean as it would be, in the tepid water. Her heart ached for Ike and Mist, for her family and friends. Her heart ached, too, for the men and women, the innocent Laguz and helpless animals, she had been murdering her way through in hopes of freedom.

But her heart ached, also, for Petrine. She was not Titania’s friend, no—not even friendly. Hardly even kind.

But she was trying to help Titania escape, for whatever reason, and that was enough to make Titania willing to be loyal to her, at least for now. Whatever it took. Whatever it took to get home.

The first time Titania lost, it was not a match to the death. Mercifully. Instead, afterward, she sat in her chamber nursing a foot-long gash down her side and thigh that had been healed of infection and then stitched shut, meant to close up on its own.  She would live to fight another day, even if she might not survive  _that_ day, working at a handicap. 

The figure that appeared at her cell door barely fit into the hallway. His footsteps were heavy, even tread, the restricted movement of a man encased in full-plate but at ease with the armor.  The Black Knight stopped in front of the door, stood there, one hand leaned against the hilt of his sword. 

Titania had found her time to grieve,  sweated and bled it out fighting for her life. She no longer wanted to tackle him and try to kill the man through his unmoving helmet, but neither did she have much of any interest in speaking to him. Indeed, she remained silent, ignoring him, laying on her cot and staring out the slit window until he broke the silence himself.

“His Majesty has declared you free to join the army if you so wish. General Petrine has not yet returned to Nevassa, but I came to collect you, if you wish to go to her camp.” 

“The Four Riders of Daein seem to have little to do, if they can find the time to keep visiting me like this.” Titania did not move. She refused to look at the General. “There are jailers who would be more suited to releasing me than you.”

“Had I not killed Gawain, by accident or no, you would not be here. You, too, were one of his students, albeit in the axe and not the sword. You deserve far better than to be left to rot in a cell.”

“You killed him.”

“Yes. I did. And for that, I am truly sorry.”

Titania shut her eyes, squeezed them tight to keep herself from crying. To hear the man speak, now, this close, she could hear the regret in his voice, the sorrow. It was not forgiveness, not anything of the like, but there was a gulf between blame and understanding. The Black Knight had truly, genuinely, not meant to kill Greil. It had been an accident. But it was no easier to face that—to know that Greil was not even half the fighter he had once been, that he had died so ignominiously that it could be a mistake to fell him in battle. 

In his own way, the Black Knight spoke of Greil as if he had loved him no less than Titania herself had. 

“I do not expect you to accept any kindness from me, but I know Petrine will wish to see you.” And that was no easier to recognize. When had Titania become someone who cared what Petrine thought?

But that was her ticket out of there.

Titania rose and followed him, limping at every step on her injured leg, out of the underbelly of the arena. 

Outside, Daein was in winter,  a hard frost cold on the ground, a wan morning sunlight pouring down through grey, overcast skies. Even that light was enough to make her eyes water, blinding Titania temporarily. As she stood blinking, forearm pressed over her eyes, she was unsurprised that the Black Knight waited for her patiently, one hand folded into the cloth of his cloak as he stood aside. Perhaps he, too, had seen his share of jails.

The encampment of Petrine’s arm of the army was mostly empty but for retainers and the injured, dogs picking over emptied tents for forgotten food ground into the dirt. The Black Knight led Titania through until they reached Petrine’s tent. He nodded to her, once, and then left, walking away with his slow, heavy tread off whence he had come. 

Titania was left, without guard, to her own devices.

Injured as she was, left without her horse to ride, Titania did not make a break for it. Instead, she went into the tent, lay down, and fell asleep, comfortable on Petrine’s far more comfortable camp bed than upon her own stone cot.

Footsteps woke her, and Titania sat up, feeling mechanically for a knife she no longer had. There was a silhouette framed in the open tent doorway, long dark hair cast into liquid shadow by the shade of the moonlight. “You are an unexpected guest,” Petrine said, her voice low, worn from shouting orders.

“Ashnard released me to join you. The Black Knight came to get me.”

Petrine let the tent flap fall,  stepped inside, vanishing into the darkness. She came to the edge of her bed and Titania leaned up on one elbow. There was a hesitation, Petrine’s eyes more adjusted to the dark than hers were, before she reached out and pushed the blanket to the side, revealing the gash up Titania’s thigh and side, the bandages peeking out from beneath her tunic. Even through her gloves, Petrine’s hands were warm. 

“Did you lose?”

“I lived,” Titania replied, in lieu of any other answer. Petrine’s touch was gentle as she touched her fingertips to Titania’s breeches.

“May I see?”

Titania pulled the laces on her breeches so that she could push them down, lifting her hips so that they slid past her hips. Petrine’s  fingers were warm through the leather of her gloves, her touch gentle as she felt the stitches, the raised, swollen skin around the injury where it was beginning to heal.  Beneath her touch, Titania shuddered slightly, gooseflesh raising along the back of her neck and down her spine. Petrine’s breathing was loud in the silence. Her touch trembled. 

“A handsome scar,” she said at last, her whisper low and heady. Petrine put pressure on the sutures, not enough to hurt, but enough that Titania felt the pain welling up, hot inside her, throbbing in time wth her heartbeat. She tried not to think too hard about what it would have looked like if Petrine had pulled her hand back, licked Titania's blood from her fingertips.  


She thought about it.

Titania  reached out, fumbling until she found Petrine’s shoulder in the dark, pulled the other woman towards her, and kissed her. She was still in armor, and it gave her form and figure a weight and power that was heady, coiled violence sheathed while Titania was vulnerable. It was less than coordinated, kissing in the dark, but Petrine’s fingers were warm against the sensitive skin of her waist, fingertips brushing stretch marks and shying around the inflamed sutures of the cut. Her own breathing was heavy, curling toward Titania, chasing the taste of her kisses.  


Petrine crawled onto the bed, her weight pressing Titania down. She pressed her free hand to Titania's chest, palm hot over her nipple through the thin leather of her gloves. Petrine's fingertips moved across the downy, fine hairs of Titania's inner thighs, then reached up between them. There was the silightest moment of hesitation, as if waiting for an invitation.

Titania sucked in a quick, sharp breath, and Petrine bit her lower lip to make her gasp again, Titania's legs falling open to make room for Petrine's hand, hitching her good thigh up. Petrine's fingers pushed through her pubic hair, tangling in curls, to scrape across the top of her mons, between her labia, to find her clit, her touch made all the more electric by the leather of her gloves. She pinched Titania's nipple through the cloth of her tunic, then scraped her nails over it.

Titania gasped into Petrine’s mouth, shut her eyes, and just for now, forgot about everything else. Every plan, every plot, her escape—for now, for just right now, none of that mattered. This, first. That, later. Now, she was chasing the feeling, as if her skin was aflame, hot and cold all at once, arching up into Petrine's weight as the other woman straddled her uninjured thigh, leather and metal clanking on the bed. Titania could feel she was damp, even through her clothes, the heat at the heart of her.  


Petrine dragged the pad of her thumb over Titania's clit, again, again, the feel of the leather against her making her shake. Titania gasped, moaned when Petrine slid two fingers up into her, curled them forward, stretching her opening. She ground her thumb down, pinching Titania's clit between her fingers, stroking harder. It was rough, heady, but Titania was _wet_ , pressing back into Petrine's touch as insistently as she was being given it. She lost herself in it, in the slide of Petrine's fingers inside of her as she thrust them, in the circles atop her clit. 

When Petrine pulled her fingers free, pinched Titania's clit between them, and twisted, Titania came with a muffled shout, gasping as Petrine pressed two, then three, fingers back inside her, never letting up, helping her ride the high even as the General rode _her_ , whining into her mouth.

It was all worth it, even if just for this.


End file.
